Modern textile mills have increasingly turned to mechanical bale opening and fiber delivery apparatus as a substitute for manually opening bales and its inherent disadvantages. Apparatus of this general type is disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,777,908; 3,973,683, and 3,986,623.
More specifically, the aforesaid prior art patents describe apparatus that, generally characterized, includes a head that is provided with finger elements or similar fiber removing elements, and this head is arranged to travel along a plurality of bales of fiber which are arranged in a laydown adjacent a hopper or receiver. The movement of the head is controlled so that it passes above the bale laydown on an elevated track system and stops above a selected bale, whereupon the head is lowered to a point where the fiber removing elements can engage the fibers at the top surface of the bale and remove a portion of such fibers. The head is then raised, and moved to a position above the hopper where the fibers are released to fall therein for further processing, such as blending.
The movement of the head is preferably controlled automatically to travel to the selected bale positions in a predetermined sequence, and this sequence may be selectively altered to permit the movement of the head to correspond to the particular bale laydown from which it is feeding, all as described in greater detail in the aforesaid U.S. Pat. No. 3,986,623. While the automatic control, and the ability to vary the number and combinations of bale positions from which fiber is removed, substantially increases the versatility of the apparatus in removing fibers in sequence from a bale laydown having varying numbers of bales at different bale positions, there is still some problem of removing generally equal quantities of fiber from all of the bales in a given bale laydown. Additionally, while it is desirable for all bales in a given laydown to be consumed generally equally so that all of the exhausted bales can be replaced simultaneously rather than piecemeal, the above-described apparatus will often result in some bales being consumed unequally because of the normal variables in the individual bales in the laydown.
Bales may vary substantially from one another in weight, density, size and composition, which depends to some extent upon the ginning method used in forming the bale. Because of these variables, one pick-up by the head of the aforesaid apparatus will often remove a greater quantity of fiber from one bale (e.g. a less dense bale) than it will from another (e.g. a more dense bale). Since the aforesaid apparatus is designed to pick-up fiber, in a predetermined sequence, from all of the bales in a given bale laydown, it will be apparent that bales having the variables noted above may be consumed at different rates, thereby resulting in the disadvantages discussed above.
One fiber feeding machine currently in use includes a traveling pick-up head which moves along a row of bales that are arranged in clusters, with the clusters being spaced along the path of travel of the pick-up head. The head stops above each of the clusters and removes fibers simultaneously from all of the bales in the cluster, and then moves to the next cluster to remove fibers therefrom. The control system includes a memory which establishes the level of each cluster of bales after each pick-up therefrom, and the control system for the pick-up head automatically adjusts the height of the pick-up head, based on the memory input from each individual cluster, each time the pick-up head returns to each such cluster. While this control system serves to properly adjust the height of the pick-up head to remove fibers from the top surface of bale clusters having varying heights, there is no known provision in this system for varying the sequence of the pick-up head as it moves serially from one bale cluster to the next. Accordingly, there is no provision in this system for insuring that all of the individual bales in the bale laydown will be consumed substantially equally by the pick-up head.
In accordance with the present invention, the aforesaid drawbacks are substantially eliminated by providing a control feature which results in all of the bales in a laydown being consumed generally equally, even though the bales may be of varying weights, densities, sizes or compositions.